Physical Science websites

This week's installment: Physical Science!

Newton's Apple website (affiliated with PBS). The site itself is navigable probably for grades 3-4 and up independently, but younger kids I would either walk through with them, or get them started on the link I wanted them to work with. The main page has a streaming video that plays immediately when the link opens; I found that to be a bit annoying, even if the video is neat content. There are several links from the main page along the top of the screen about different kinds of science that kids might be into. For physical science, you can click the “Physics and Sports” link http://www.newtonsapple.tv/TeacherGuides_physicsSports.php which brings you a list of different videos to watch in that category. There's also a glossary-style list linked from the home page of different kinds of experiments children can try at home.

“Einstein's Legacy” page about X-Rays, grade range probably between 4th and 6th grade. There is a small interactive picture of a hand where you can look at the bone structure by moving a small frame around. Linked from this page are explanatory websites about electromagnetic waves (with a slider so one can see more or less relative size of waves and what those waves do,) and about CAT scans. I would be especially interested in having this website as a resource if I were to have another student who underwent neurological surgery. When I worked as a paraprofessional I had a student who had extensive surgery on his brain, and it would have been nice to have this website as a resource for the other students in the class about what he was having done when he spoke about having his scans.

XTALENT image gallery; has hundreds of micrographic images of nearly anything you can imagine wanting to look at that closely. This is a resource that could easily be mined for a unit about germs for younger children, older children could go searching for pictures that related to a science unit they were learning about. I like the notion of having them compare pictures and relative size, discuss why things might need to be that size. There are pictures of things like the difference between a hair cut with a razor blade and one cut with an electric razor, having students discuss the reasons for the hair looking so different might be interesting, too.

Skoool Interactive Training website about magnets and static electricity. This website is very kid-usable, grades 2-4. Each picture/animation is accompanied by a voice reading a description of what is going on in the picture. I can imagine a student using this website to inform a report or experiment. One big advantage to this website is that there are no distracting ads to click on at all, just the activity.

A webquest designed by one “Mrs. McElwee” guiding students through designing their own roller coaster. This website is for students in 6-8th grade, perhaps even older, though I think middle school students could do the activities with only a little support. It is set up to be a guided individual study, and sends the user of the site to other sites for resource material. This looks to be something that could well build students' ability to do real research and work using the internet, I will be on the lookout for more of these.